Self thinning is a phenomenon of the mortality of some individuals caused by intraspecific competition. The researches on self thinning pure stands for 40 years in the world were summarized and evaluated including self thinning rule, allometric model, mean individual weight density trajectory during the course of self thinning, species self thinning line and dynamic thinning line, the relationship between the slope of self thinning line and biomass, the relationship between the self thinning and co...